Curious Geek. Husband. Father. Educator.

I’m on Sabbatical from Intel for two months

Well, the time is upon me. My cube is packed, and the clock is ticking towards 5:00 PM. After that, I’m officially on sabbatical, and won’t be back at Intel until December.

What is sabbatical you ask? Well, at Intel, every seven years you’re employed there, you get 8 weeks paid time off in the form of a sabbatical, to do with as you please. You can’t break it up, but you can combine it with vacation time to extend it (I’m not). It’s a great benefit – one of the perks that Intel offers that not many other companies do. They do it to let you recharge and refocus and reinvigorate yourself, which is exactly what I’m going to do.

What are my plans?

First, Iâ€™m organizing an event â€“ Ignite Portland. Itâ€™s a fun cool kind of techie event where people get 20 slides for 15 seconds each to present a really cool idea, on any topic. Free to attend, free to present. Itâ€™s on Oct. 25 downtown at Wieden+Kennedy. Details are on the site, and if you’re in Portland, I’d love to see you there. There will be free (sponsored) food and drinks, and maybe even schwag! Check it out and RSVP if you can come. Weâ€™re already over 150 people attending, so this party is much larger than I imagined when I conceived of the idea. Letâ€™s blow it all the way out.

After that, weâ€™re taking a road trip to Idaho and Utah to see family. Weâ€™ll be gone about two weeks, and Iâ€™m making plans to stay as connected as possible the whole way (3G modem card + portable wifi router + battery pack. Seriously.)

When we get home, I have a bunch of web/hacking projects I want to work on. Havenâ€™t decided which ones, yet. And I plan to play lots of videogames, and hang around the house, driving Rachel crazy.

People have been asking me if I’m going to take a break from blogging/twitter/etc. I dont’ know why, but I find it amusing. 🙂 Since Iâ€™m a blogger, all the way down to the core, Iâ€™ll be posting constant updates on what Iâ€™m doing here at www.tinyscreenfuls.com and in my lifestream, www.joshbancroft.com. Follow me on Twitter, subscribe to those sites, and it will be just like youâ€™re there on sabbatical with me! 😉

Iâ€™m officially back at work on December 10. I have some vacation left to use before the end of the year, so I’ll be in and out until January, when I plan to jump back in with both feet, and start rocking some cool ideas at Intel! 🙂